George Redfox, president of the Downey Museum of Art board of directors, finds a plaque of the museum where the art is being stored in Downey, CA. DMOA used to be a well-known modern art museum. Its collection isn't huge but has a number of important contemporary artists in it. Conditions where the art is being stored are terrible, putting the collection at risk. (Thomas R. Cordova / Staff Photographer)

DOWNEY >> A piece of California’s heritage sits, unknown to most, inside a former janitorial closet in a squat, beige building near the south end of Downey.

Stacks of aging paintings reach toward the ceiling leaving only a narrow path to slip down through the center of the room.

A smell clings to that cramped space: old paper, aging cloth, not quite musty.

This is the Downey Museum of Art, homeless since it was forced to leave its building at Furman Park in 2009.

For George Redfox, chairman of the museum’s board of directors, and others involved in Downey’s arts community, the room is both a source of hope and a reminder of a sudden fall from grace for the 400-piece collection worth about $1.2 million. Attempts to find the collection a new home have stalled, and Redfox — a slim, friendly man with close-cut brown hair and a soft voice — says time is running out.

“We’d like to go forward if we could, but realistically … I’d say we have six months to a year left before we have to start doing what’s best for the art,” he said.

Early days

The Downey Museum of Art was founded in 1957 at a stucco building in Furman Park donated by Willard Woodrow, president of the Aldon Construction Co. His wife, Alice, was the museum’s first director.

For decades the museum prospered, featuring rotating exhibits and an annual art festival known as “Art Unlimited.”

Harold Tseklenis, a longtime member of the museum and current board member, recalled those early days.

“The museum was really a product of the community,” said Tseklenis, who moved to Downey in 1959. “The same people who felt strongly enough about the city to incorporate are the people that made the museum happen.”

When Downey was incorporated in 1956, about 40,000 people called the city home. By the end of the 1960s that population had doubled, mostly due to economic gains driven by the aerospace industry, he said.

North American Rockwell, later Rockwell International, provided steady employment and a healthy economic climate that supported organizations such as the museum, the Downey Symphony and Downey Civic Light Opera for decades.

But by the 1990s, Rockwell had withered and finally faded from Downey forever in 1999. The intervening years saw legacy arts organizations wither away as well, Tseklenis said.

“The only thing that’s left of cultural arts is the Downey Symphony,” he said. “People that were into the arts and had money, the patrons, they’re no longer around.”

The museum hung on, even planning an audacious expansion in the mid-2000s.

Internal dispute

That project, however, would lead to the museum’s demise after a meltdown in 2009 between the board of directors and the museum’s executive director, Kate Davies.

Davies alleged that she was owed money for work she did at the museum.

The California Attorney General’s office got involved after Davies allegedly took several art pieces to her home as collateral. The attorney general’s office also investigated the museum for fraud and mismanagement.

The museum was eventually cleared of wrongdoing and the board reformed with one mission: find a new home.

With all this in mind, Redfox and the board petitioned the Downey City Council on Jan. 14 with a final plan to save the museum.

The request was simple — allow the museum to return to its historic building at Furman Park.

But after nearly two hours of debates, Redfox was worried. When the votes came in, the lease went to a rival proposal by the YMCA.

There went the final hope, he thought, as he left the uneasy stillness of the council chamber and stepped into the Santa Ana wind blowing outside.

Fears for the art

Completing the mission grows more important because the current storage room lacks temperature and humidity controls, and fears are mounting that the art cannot last much longer.

Redfox pulled back a painting by Boris Deutsch, a seminal modernist figurative painter in Southern California during the 1930s and 1940s.

“I think some of these are starting to mold, but there’s no way of knowing how many for sure,” he said.

The artwork, museum inventory, financial records and other documents are stuffed into the room — inaccessible to the public or to the board itself.

Andrew Wahlquist, president of the Downey Arts Coalition, a community-based arts advocacy group, said rebuilding an arts and culture presence in the city has been a challenge.

“There’s a certain kind of brain drain that’s happened,” he said. “The store was left unmanaged.”

The museum was the first of Downey’s historical arts organizations to fall, he said. Then the Downey Art League imploded, followed by the Downey Civic Light Orchestra last year.

Although there are still people interested in supporting and promoting the arts, Downey has lost many of the patrons and community leaders that helped make the organizations strong.

“The people that (had money) and loved the arts moved out of Downey,” Wahlquist said. “We have the passion, but we’re inexperienced.”

But perhaps not all is lost.

New vision

Valentin Flores, director of the Stay Gallery in downtown Downey and executive director of the nonprofit arts organization Downey Art Vibe, says he has a vision for a revitalized downtown area where the arts flourish.

That vision could include the Downey Museum of Art’s collection, he said.

The Stay Gallery and Downey Art Vibe have been the nexus for some of the most exciting and provocative art installations the city has seen in years, including a sound art installment by Downey artist Roy Shabla, a special exhibit featuring an Irish artist through the Sister Cities program and an industrial art exhibition in fall 2013.

In addition, Wahlquist’s coalition has seen success in organizing arts events including one of the city’s largest, the Make Music Downey festival.

“No one wants to see that collection go,” Flores said. There has been some discussion of including the collection as part of the ongoing downtown revitalization, he said.

“The Downey Avenue Theater is the project that has incredible potential to create (a sense of place) in downtown. That’s the project that will catapult this into the stratosphere. We’ve got to get away from the old-school way of thinking. We have to find a solution that allows us to collaborate across sectors — nonprofit, private and public.”

Flores and other supporters of the project hope to turn the Avenue Theater into a multi-use arts space with the possibility of live-work housing or artist-in-residency programs.

“If we were a different community we could have one building (per group), but we’re not a community that can sustain that. (It) needs to be the multi-use arts space. That’s where you get the win-win.”

Redfox said he could be open to such a project and that the board of directors is working on a new direction for the museum.

“We started cataloging the collection in late March or early April with (Roy) Shabla in charge,” he said.

Once each piece in the museum’s collection and its historical records are catalogued, Redfox says the board can begin taking real steps to organize larger shows, collaborate with arts organizations and museums, and try to find a new home.

“We’re regrouping right now,” he said. “We’re doing small events to keep the name out there. After the (Jan. 14 meeting) we were devastated, but a week or so later we just thought — we don’t want this to die.”